An interview with Associate Editor Professor Yonghui Zhang

We were delighted to welcome to the team Professor Younghui Zhang as an Associate Editor for RSC Medicinal Chemistry earlier this year, and we wanted to find out more about him and his research experiences. Read our interview with Yonghui below.


What attracted you to pursue a career in medicinal chemistry and how did you get to where you are now?
A career in medicinal chemistry integrates my training background in both chemical biology (postdoctoral position) and organic chemistry (Ph. D). I therefore chose to join the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tsinghua University in 2013 as a Professor.

Why did you choose to specialize in your specific research field?
Over the past 10 years, I have come to realize the indispensable role of lipid metabolism in immune regulation. However, the underlying mechanism is obscure and there are few translational efforts. This led to my group starting to identify drug targets in lipid biosynthesis that could help to develop new immunotherapies, as well as other medicinal chemistry efforts in this area.

What do you see as the biggest challenges facing researchers who work in your field?
A lack of feasible drug targets.

What is the most exciting research paper that you have read recently?
A paper from 11 years ago. It brought up hope to fight KRAS. (K-Ras(G12C)inhibitors allosterically control GTP affinity and effector interactions. Nature, 2013, 503, 548–551.)

Which of your publications are you most proud of? Which is your favourite piece of your own research?
A paper in Cell, 2018, and a paper in Immunity, 2019. These are my favourite pieces of research that demonstrate the roles of isoprenoids in immune regulation.

What is your biggest passion outside of science?
Reading and food.

What career would you have chosen if you had not taken this career path?
A writer. I would like to interpret lives in my own way.

What do you see as the most important scientific achievement of the last decade?
Immunotherapies. Now people can finally realize the power of the immune system and how it can be exploited to fight diseases.

Why should young people study chemistry, and what advice would you give anyone thinking of pursuing chemistry?
Young people should study chemistry because it is so important, and it dominates our lives.  Also, one must persist to understand the beauty of chemistry.

What are you most looking forward to in your new Associate Editor role?
Bringing more innovative research to publication.

Photo of Yonghui Zhang

About Yonghui:

Yonghui Zhang received his Ph.D in Chemistry in 2002 from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences and pursued his postdoctoral training at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States. Dr. Zhang is now a Professor at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Tsinghua University, a leader of higher education and academic research in China. Dr. Zhang has published over 60 papers in the field of medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, chemical biology and immunology.

He has pioneered in discovering and characterizing the relationship between lipid metabolism and immune regulation. By using a multidisciplinary approach involving structural biology, molecular immunology, cell and mice models, and medicinal chemistry, he demonstrated that the mevalonate pathway is a druggable target for vaccine adjuvants and developed lipophilic bisphosphonates and statins as Th-1 vaccine adjuvants. Currently, his lab is developing and applying innovative chemical approaches to a variety of immuno-modulatory process, with a focus on vaccination, allogeneic immune cell therapy and new anti-infection strategy. Dr. Zhang has published over 60 papers in the field of medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, chemical biology and immunology.

In addition to his academic work, through Unicet, a biotech start-up he co-founded, he is also moving forward in the newly emerging space of gamma delta T cell based therapeutics to translate his research work into innovative medicine and building proprietary biotech platforms centered around gamma delta T cells as the cell therapeutic vehicle and butyrophilin-targeting therapeutics.

 

Submit your research to Yonghui now!

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Announcing the 2021 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship winner

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Dr Jacob Bush

Congratulations to Dr Jacob Bush, recipient of the 2021 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship.

The Lectureship was open to any candidate who received their PhD in 2011 or later and has made a significant contribution to medicinal chemistry in their early career. The RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board selected Dr. Bush, from GSK, from a short-list of nominees.

Many congratulations to Dr. Bush for winning the lectureship.

When he was informed of his selection, Dr. Bush said:

It’s a privilege to receive this lectureship as it recognises cutting edge work in chemical biology by a team of outstanding scientists both at GSK and at our academic partner institutions.  Building these innovative technologies for agile target validation is key to GSK’s differentiated approach to identify, select and develop more genetically validated targets which have higher likelihood of success.”

 

About Dr Bush:

Dr Jacob Bush works in medicinal chemistry & chemical biology at GSK, leading the development of new technologies to accelerate drug discovery, in particular through innovations in chemical biology and artificial intelligence (AI). He works between GSK, where he is group leader in the chemical biology department and The Francis Crick Institute, where he is an active member of the leadership team of the GSK-Crick LinkLabs collaboration.

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The BMCS Hall of Fame & Medal

The RSC Interest Group for the Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector has a number of awards, events and grants supporting the medicinal chemistry community. Here, we will introduce just one of the ways the BMCS celebrates outsanding science in our field.

The BMCS Hall of Fame and Medal

The Hall of Fame and Medal is Individual award which recognizes prominent chemists for outstanding, sustained, contributions to any area of interest to the RSC Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector (BMCS), e.g. medicinal chemistry, agriscience, biooorganic chemistry and chemical biology, including teaching excellence, outstanding contributions to the BMCS, or any combination thereof.

Previous Hall of Fame inductees include Professor C Robin Ganellin (2018) and Sir Simon Campbell CBE (2019)

2018 & 2019 BMCS Hall of Fame inductees Professor C Robin Ganellin (2018) and Sir Simon Campbell CBE (2019)

Left: Prof. C Robin Ganellin receives his medal in 2018. Right: Sir Simon Campbell CBE, 2019 BMCS Hall of Fame inductee.

 

Introducing David Rees, PhD, FRSC, FMedSci, the 2020 Hall of Fame Inductee

In 2020, RSC Medicinal Chemistry Advisory Board member Dr David Rees was chosen to be inducted in the Hall of Fame.

David is the Chief Scientific Officer at Astex Pharmaceuticals, and is a figure recognized internationally for his innovative use of chemistry in drug discovery. He has led collaborations resulting in the discovery of three launched drugs, the anaesthetic agent Sugammadex which has been used in over 30 million patients in 60 countries, and the anti-cancer agents Ribociclib and Erdafitinib, both predicted to achieve blockbuster status. David is well known for his calm authority, scientific rigor and enthusiasm. To find out more about some of his research, see his recent Open Access RSC Medicinal Chemistry Review article (Fragment-based drug discovery: opportunities for organic synthesis)

David Rees will be presented with his Medal and Certificate at the 21st RSC / SCI Medicinal Chemistry Symposium, delivering a presentation entitled “Medicines for Millions”.

Dr David Rees, 2020 Hall of Fame inductee

Have an outstanding chemist in mind who you feel should be in the Hall of Fame?

Submit your nomination for the 2021 inductee from 1st March 2021. Independent nominations may be submitted by e-mail to the BMCS Conference Secretariat outlining the justification and including the nominee’s CV and publication list. Additional independent letters of support to reinforce the nomination are strongly encouraged.

Nominees should be resident in the UK or continental Europe, or have spent a considerable proportion of their career there. There is no requirement to be an RSC or BMCS member. There are no age restrictions, and nominees may have an academic or industrial background.

 

To find out more about the activities of the BMCS, please see their webpage

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Coming Soon: RSC Medicinal Chemistry themed issue on Covalent Drug Design

We are delighted to announce our newest themed issue on Covalent Drug Design, which is Guest Edited by Dr. Lyn Jones (Dana-Faber Cancer Institute), Prof. Keriann Backus (UCLA), and Prof. Zhengying Pan (Peking University).

This issue on covalent drug design will include areas such as covalent fragment-based drug discovery, reversible covalent warhead design, structure-based drug design and covalent docking and covalent chemical probes, natural products and degraders. For more information about the scope of this issue, or if you would like to contribute an article to this collection, please contact the Editorial Office at medchem-rsc@rsc.org.

Submissions are open from now until 3 June 2021

New research in RSC Medicinal Chemistry is published as Research Articles. This article type encompasses both Communication and Full Paper styles with no strict page limit.

All manuscripts will be subject to the journal’s usual peer review process. Accepted manuscripts will be highlighted together in a dedicated virtual issue alongside an editorial by our guest editors, regardless of submission date, and there will be no delay in the publication of all accepted manuscripts into regular issues of RSC Medicinal Chemistry.

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Introducing RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board member Paola Castaldi

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                   Dr Paola Castaldi

We are delighted to announce that Dr Paola Castaldi has joined the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board.

Paola Castaldi is an experienced and passionate chemical biologist with experience in leading multidisciplinary teams supporting programs across several therapeutic areas and stages. Her drive towards embedding state-of-the-art technologies to drug discovery and development, resulted in several contributions to target identification, mechanism of action and safety deconvolution of therapeutics.

Paola completed her undergraduate studies in pharmaceutical chemistry and received her Laurea (MSc) at University of Padova, Italy. She then went on to conduct graduate research studies at Imperial College London, UK and postdoctoral studies at UCSD and Boston University.

Before joining LifeMine Therapeutics, Paola headed the Chemical Biology & Proteomics department at AstraZeneca. Over the years Paola was responsible for the build of a state-of-the-art chemical biology and mass spectrometry hub with global impact across all therapeutic areas and platforms. Notably she played a critical role to the establishment of the protein degradation and the multiomics initiatives.

Between other responsibilities, Paola is part of the SAB for the Chemical Biology Doctorate Program at Imperial College London and has authored more than 25 peer-reviewed articles.

You can find out more about the full Editorial Board on our webpage.


Paola’s publication with RSC:

Applications of chiral C3-symmetric molecules
Susan E. Gibson and M. Paola Castaldi
Chem. Commun., 2006, 3045-3062

 

 

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Introducing RSC Medicinal Chemistry Associate Editor Yonghui Zhang

We are delighted to announce that Professor Yonghui Zhang has joined RSC Medicinal Chemistry as an Associate Editor.

Photo of Yonghui Zhang

Yonghui Zhang received his Ph.D in Chemistry in 2002 from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences and pursued his postdoctoral training at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States. Dr. Zhang is now a Professor at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Tsinghua University, a leader of higher education and academic research in China. Dr. Zhang has published over 60 papers in the field of medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, chemical biology and immunology.

He has pioneered in discovering and characterizing the relationship between lipid metabolism and immune regulation. By using a multidisciplinary approach involving structural biology, molecular immunology, cell and mice models, and medicinal chemistry, he demonstrated that the mevalonate pathway is a druggable target for vaccine adjuvants and developed lipophilic bisphosphonates and statins as Th-1 vaccine adjuvants. Currently, his lab is developing and applying innovative chemical approaches to a variety of immuno-modulatory process, with a focus on vaccination, allogeneic immune cell therapy and new anti-infection strategy. Dr. Zhang has published over 60 papers in the field of medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, chemical biology and immunology.

In addition to his academic work, through Unicet, a biotech start-up he co-founded, he is also moving forward in the newly emerging space of gamma delta T cell based therapeutics to translate his research work into innovative medicine and building proprietary biotech platforms centered around gamma delta T cells as the cell therapeutic vehicle and butyrophilin-targeting therapeutics.

Yonghui said about joining as Associate Editor: ‘It is my great honor to join RSC Medicinal Chemistry. I truly appreciate the opportunity to serve this wonderful community of my fellow professionals devoting their efforts in medicinal chemistry and I will do my best to contribute to the efficient communications among the contributors and readers of the journal.’

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Nominations for 2021 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship Open

We are pleased to welcome nominations for the 2021 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship. The Lectureship celebrates early career researchers who have made significant contributions in the fields of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery.

Nominations will close 30 November 2020.

The recipient of the lectureship will receive a contribution of up to £1000 towards speaking at a conference in 2021. We recognise many researchers’ travel plans for 2021 are uncertain, and are flexible in accommodating speaking engagements at digital conferences.

Eligibility:
The lectureship is open to candidates who received their PhD in 2011 or later and who have made a significant contribution to medicinal chemistry in their early career, particularly if they have brought new ideas to drug discovery.

How you can nominate:
If you would like to nominate someone please email medchem-rsc@rsc.org with the following details:

  • Their name
  • Their affiliation
  • At least one paragraph explaining their achievements and why you think they should be considered

Additional supporting information, for example their CV, is very helpful in making a decision but is not mandatory for making a nomination.

Self-nominations are accepted but must be supported by a letter of support from your Head of Department or similar person at your institute.

Selection:
All qualified nominations will be considered and a short-list of candidates will be selected based on the information provided at nomination. The RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board will then vote to select the recipient and the winner will be announced in early 2021.

Past winners of the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship (previously named the MedChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship) include:

  • Dr Chandradhish Ghosh (Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces) – 2020
  • Dr. Amanda Hargrove (Duke University, USA) – 2019
  • Dr. Gonçalo Bernardes (University of Cambridge, UK) – 2018
  • Dr Laura H. Heitman (Leiden University, Netherlands) – 2017
  • Dr Alessio Ciulli (University of Dundee, UK) – 2016
  • Professor Richard Payne (University of Sydney, Australia) – 2015
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Register now for upcoming RSC Medicinal Chemistry Desktop Seminars

We’re excited to announce three upcoming RSC Medicinal Chemistry Desktop Seminars, featuring winners of the 2019 and 2020 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship.

RSC Desktop Seminars are an initiative from the Royal Society of Chemistry to bring cutting-edge research directly to you! Now, more than ever, there is a crucial need for sharing research, and we’re pleased to present alongside Editorial Board members and Associate Editors, two RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureships in a digital format for the first time ever.

These seminars will cover a wide range of medicinal chemistry topics, from targeting infectious diseases to techniques for candidate identification and the chemistry of drug design. Be sure to register for each seminar individually at the links below!

30th September:

Chandradhish Ghosh

Dr. Chandradhish Ghosh

Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova

Professor Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova

Dr. Chandradhish Ghosh, 2020 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship recipient, (Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces)
“Fantastic bugs and how to kill them”

Professor Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova, RSC Medicinal Chemistry Associate Editor, (University of Kentucky)
Infectious disease research/publishing in time of a pandemic”

Introductions will be given by RSC Medicinal Chemistry Executive Editor, Dr. Katie Lim, and the webinar will be hosted by Dr. Jennifer Lee.

See more information about the speakers and register here!

7th October:

Amanda Hargrove

Professor Amanda Hargrove

Professor Jean-Louis Reymond

Professor Jean-Louis Reymond

Professor Amanda Hargrove, 2019 MedChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship recipient and ChemComm Advisory Board member, (Duke University)
“Modulating the conformation and function of disease-relevant RNA with small molecules”

Professor Jean-Louis Reymond, RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board member, (University of Bern)
“GDB and the chemical space: enumeration, visualization, synthesis”

Introductions will be given by RSC Medicinal Chemistry Executive Editor, Dr. Katie Lim, and the webinar will be hosted by Dr. Jennifer Lee.

Registration is open now.

14th October:

Dr. Yoshinori Ikeura

Dr. Yoshinori Ikeura

Sally-Ann Poulsen

Professor Sally-Ann Poulsen

Professor Sally-Ann Poulsen, RSC Medicinal Chemistry Associate Editor, (Griffith University)
“The elephant in the room – Fragment screening using mass spectrometry”

Dr. Yoshinori Ikeura, RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board member, (Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners)
“The chemist’s contribution to the modern era in drug discovery”

Introductions will be given by RSC Medicinal Chemistry Executive Editor, Dr. Katie Lim, and the webinar will be hosted by Dr. Hiromitsu Urakami.

Registration is now open, and you can sign up here!

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2020 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Lectureship Winner

Congratulations to Dr. Chandradhish Ghosh, the recipient of the 2020 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship!

Chandradhish GhoshThe Lectureship was open to any candidate who received their PhD in 2010 or later and has made a significant contribution to medicinal chemistry in their early career. The RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board selected Dr. Ghosh, from Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany, from a short-list of nominees.

Many congratulations to Dr. Ghosh for winning the lectureship.

When he was informed of his selection, Dr. Ghosh said:

I feel humbled to be recognized by scientists who inspire me. It motivates me to strive harder to solve the problems of human diseases. This would not have been possible without the support of fantastic mentors, colleagues, collaborators, teachers, friends and family.”

About Chandradhish

Dr. Chandradhish Ghosh performed his doctoral studies at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, under the supervision of Prof. Jayanta Haldar, after first earning his MSc in Chemistry at the University of Delhi. Since 2017, he has been working at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces, in the group of Prof. Peter H. Seeberger. His current work focusses on targeting neglected tropical diseases.

His doctoral work on membrane-active small molecules against drug-resistant pathogens has led to an anti-Ebola drug candidate. He has contributed to the sum of knowledge in the field by the publication of several highly cited reviews. He has won several awards, including the prestigious Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award in 2015.

To show the range of his scientific work, some of Dr. Ghosh’s recent works are below:

A review on cell wall synthesis inhibitors with an emphasis on glycopeptide antibiotics

Med. Chem. Commun., 2017, 8, 516-533

l-Lysine based lipidated biphenyls as agents with anti-biofilm and anti-inflammatory properties that also inhibit intracellular bacteria

Chem. Commun., 2017, 53, 8427-8430

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Introducing RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board member Jean-Louis Reymond

Prof. Jean-Louis Reymond

Professor Jean-Louis Reymond

 

We are delighted to announce that Professor Jean-Louis Reymond has joined the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board.

Jean-Louis Reymond studied Chemistry and Biochemistry at ETH Zürich, Switzerland and obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Lausanne on natural products synthesis (1989). After a Post-Doc and Assistant Professorship at the Scripps Research Institute, USA, he joined the University of Bern, Switzerland (1997).

His research focuses on the enumeration and visualization of chemical space for small molecule drug discovery, the synthesis of new molecules from the Generated DataBase  (GDB, http://gdb.unibe.ch), and the design and synthesis of peptide dendrimers and polycyclic peptides as antimicrobials and for nucleic acids delivery.

 

He is the author of more than 300 scientific publications and reviews. See a selection of his recent RSC publications below:

An antimicrobial bicyclic peptide from chemical space against multidrug resistant Gram-negative bacteria

Chem. Commun., 2018,54, 5130-5133 

 

Datasets and their influence on the development of computer assisted synthesis planning tools in the pharmaceutical domain

Chem. Sci., 2020,11, 154-168  (Open Access)

 

Design, crystal structure and atomic force microscopy study of thioether ligated d,l-cyclic antimicrobial peptides against multidrug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Chem. Sci., 2017,8, 7464-7475  (Open Access)    

 

Cytotoxic peptide conjugates of dinuclear areneruthenium trithiolato complexes

Med. Chem. Commun., 2015,6, 347-350     

     

You can find out more about the full Editorial Board on our webpage.                         

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